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A knowledge hub for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to collaborate and deliver best practice and evidence in the field.
Co-Directors: Professor John Vorhaus and Dr Keri Wong
Our centre has an exclusive focus on education and the criminal justice system. We are a knowledge hub for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to collaborate on collecting, improving and disseminating the best and most promising evidence and practice in the field.
We engage with:
- education in a broad sense - formal, informal and non-formal education, training and learning
- the life course as a whole - a developmental approach to understanding the relationship between education, offending and desistance
- rights and justice - the rights of prisoners as citizens and learners entitled to high-quality and diverse learning opportunities.
The centre was formerly known as Centre for Education in the Criminal Justice System (CECJS).
People
Co-directors
- Professor John Vorhaus
- Dr Keri Wong
Advisory group
- Jane Hurry, Emeritus Professor
- Dave Maguire, Prison Reform Trust
- Lynne Rogers, Reader in Education, Co-Director of the Centre for Post-14 Education and Work
- Anita Wilson, Prison Ethnographer.
Honorary affiliated advisors
- Andreas Aresti, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Westminster
- Angela Herbert, Director of Inside Out Transformational Coaching Solutions.
Funders
We have benefited from the generous support from:
- British Academy
- CfBT
- City and Guilds Centre for Skills Development
- Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) / National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE)
- Department for Education and Skills
- ESRC
- Higher Education Funding Council
- Mary Kinross Charitable Trust
- PWC
- Sir John Cass's Foundation
- The Bell Foundation
- The National Offender Management Service
- UKRI Research England
- Youth Justice Board
- 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust.
Activities
- Teaching
We are a teaching hub for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in education within the criminal justice system.
For undergraduate students we offer a module introduction to Criminal Journeys, exploring views on what constitutes crime, how people become involved in the criminal justice system and what that involvement looks like.
- Publications
- Lenoir, R., & Wong, K. K. Y. (2023). Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people from black and mixed ethnic groups’ mental health in West London: a qualitative study. BMJ open, 13(5), e071903
- Maguire, D. 2021. Male, Failed, Jailed. Palgrave McMillan.
- Wong, K. K. Y., Francesconi, M., & Flouri, E. (2021). Internalizing and externalizing problems across childhood and psychotic-like experiences in young-adulthood: The role of developmental period. Schizophrenia Research, 231, 108-114.
- Portnoy, J., Bedoya, A., & Wong, K. K. Y. (2021). Child Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior and Parental Well-Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic. UCL Open: Environment Preprint.
- Wong, K. K. Y. (2020). Schizophrenia and Crime. Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, 4575-4580.
- Vorhaus, J. (2021). Bringing People Down: Degrading Treatment and Punishment. New Criminal Law Review. 24.3: 433-466.
- Intensive English and maths provision in prisons: pilot evaluation in 6 prisons, with NIACE, for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)
- Hurry, J., Lawrence, P., Wilson, A., & Plant, J. (2013). Evaluation of 'Write to be Heard", a project on writing in prison, commissioned by National Offender management Service (NOMS), led by the Arts Alliance
- Rogers, L., Simonot, M., & Nartey, A. (2014). Prison Educators: Professionalism Against the Odds (PDF). London: UCU.
- Analysis of youth offenders' occupational identities and its relationship to subsequent offending patterns
- An assessment of the English and maths skills levels of prisoners in England
- Martin Luther King "Now is the time" - His Dream to Influence Education Today by Angela Herbert
- Vorhaus, J. (2014). Prisoners’ right to education. London Review of Education. 12.2: 162-174.
- Rogers, L. (2016) Disengagement from Education. London: Trentham Books IOE Press.
- Hurry, J. and Rogers, L. Eds (2014) Education, training and employment in prison and post-release. Special Edition, London Review of Education, 12(2).
- Rogers, L., Hurry, J., Simonot, M., & Wilson, A. (2014) The aspirations and realities of prison education for under-25s in the London area, London Review of Education, 12(2), 184–196.
To find out more about our researchers and publications go to:
- Blue-Sky Thinking seminar recordings
- Rehabilitation & Reintegration Support for Ex-Offenders in Singapore – Yellow Ribbon Singapore
- Turning a new leaf: Exploring Employment Stigma, Support, and Opportunities for Ex-convicts
- Starting Young: How does education shape criminal justice?
- How can we prevent sexual violence in adolescents?
- The quest for desistance: Implementing educational programmes for inmates
- Can biosocial criminology enhance crime prevention strategies and help the youth justice system?
- How can analysis and diagnosis help us to prevent sexual offending?
- How can the implementation and statistical assessment of programmes supporting prisoners and prison leavers contribute to remediating reoffending?
- In what ways can technology reach and impact inmates?
- The Lammy Review (2017) and beyond: What can we do to address race equality in criminal justice?
- Reintegration: What can we learn from a central London prison?